Take a Stand!
I’m reading Your Stand is Your Brand by Patrick Gentempo. I bought it online through the Book Depository. I like them because the prices are good, they have proved reasonably reliable and they don’t charge postage and delivery fees. And if the book you want isn’t available, they will suggest where else you might look.
Gentempo was familiar to me through his docu-series, Supplements Revealed, a series of in depth interviews with a variety of people connected with the supplements industry. Starting from a sceptical position, I was pleased to find a deeper understanding of the what, why and how of supplements.
Gentempo dubs himself a practical philosopher, meaning that he holds firmly to the conviction that what we believe at a deep level inevitably affects what we are able to do in our world. This means that if we hold contradictory beliefs at this deeper level, these contradiction may cancel each other out. In practice, we experience this as a deep frustration that we can’t seem to make any progress on whatever it is we are trying so hard to achieve.
Gentempo describes this situation as a misalignment. It’s like we have our arms pointing in opposite directions so that whenever we try to move towards one arm, the other arm’s opposite direction pulls us back. So, as the Red Queen famously said: Sometimes we have to run very hard just to stay on the same spot!
I can certainly relate to this in my own experience! Maybe you can too? Many’s the time I’ve felt totally convinced about the value of something yet totally unable to make any progress in achieving that something.
Gentempo gives an example from his own life. His was a typical story of a highly successful business man who became burnt out and realised that in the interests of making more money, he had sacrificed his relationship with his family.
Reflecting on his core beliefs, Gentempo realised that he had deeply absorbed the dictum: No pain, No gain; in other words, that having a ‘good’ life involved working harder and longer than anyone else - or words to that effect.
When he and his wife came to the realisation that they had deeply embraced this ‘no pain, no gain’ philosophy, and that this was a key belief that prevented them from having full enjoyment of their family life, they decided instead to adopt an ‘opposite’ belief: We can have it all!
‘Miraculously’, adopting this new belief led to a reassessment of his life, the sense he was making of it, and what he wanted to achieve. As he explains it, he had aligned his beliefs, so that the opposing forces now both pointed in the same direction. This automatically released a burst of energy and creativity.
Of course, Gentempo writes about a lot more in his book - and so far, I’m less than half way through. But this one idea got me thinking.
What if I could uncover some hitherto ‘unconscious’ beliefs that were holding me back and causing me these unpleasant feelings of frustration?
Interestingly, what I discovered, that my direct experience seemed to corroborate, was an expectation that my thoughts and experience on ‘stuff’ would be rejected!!
How can we apply this?
Here’s a three-step process.
Step 1:. STOP. Yes, Stop! Take a few deep breaths and let your body tell you what is most important in your life RIGHT NOW. Let that sink in.
Step 2: Still in STOP mode, allow yourself to become aware of any beliefs that may be interfering with your actually having and enjoying this most important thing. Allow this to sink in.
Step 3: Create an affirmation or affirmations for yourself that affirms your ability to achieve whatever it is that you really, really want at a deep level. You may have to experiment with this if you find - which you may - that your conscious mind rejects your first efforts. Remember: Neurons that fire together, wire together. Your affirmations are creating new neural networks in your brain.
Take a stand. Try this process. You are worth it!